Sleeping Lessons
by rudy flamthrowa
Summary: Depth protection and death perception, AxelRoxas, Kingdom Hearts/Inception AU. Dark!fic, character death, and messing with your head.


_Go without  
'Til the need seeps in  
You low animal  
Collect your novel petals for the stem_

Perhaps I am too ambitious. I hope this makes sense. Enjoy

**Sleeping Lessons**  
Kingdom Hearts/Inception  
Axel/Roxas  
Word Count: 8,222  
Rating: M  
**Summary: Depth protection and death perception**  
Author's Note: Be forewarned of dark!fic, character death, bad language, adult situations, and a little mind-fuckery.

**Sleeping Lessons**

by rudy**  
**

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1

The sweat sticks to everything in Singapore. It hangs on the edges of buildings in treacherous, acrid clouds, saturates the bright banners that wilt in the searing daylight, and hides in the teasing echo of a breeze that meets every street corner. It paints his pale face and rolls down his neck in obscene wet trails, disappearing where the collar of his shirt is folded out and away from his pink skin. Under his arms and in between his legs an uncomfortable heat collects. He fidgets in his plastic chair, rocking unsteadly against the broken cement beneath him. The round table he sits at is painted salmon pink and is cracked down the middle.

'Singapore, Singapore,' Axel tests the word noiselessly on his tongue around a spoonful of crab soup. Luxord always said to go to Singapore. _Clearly you've never been._ His crisp English vowels always made everything sound exotic and thrilling, but it was all a transparent act. _Clearly_, the man had no idea what he was talking about. Disgusting sweat, unbearably spicy food, thick throngs of too many people; Axel would _never_ go to Singapore.

Axel would never go to Singapore.

His plastic spoon clatters carelessly into the paper bowl, and as he licks the taste of chili peppers off his lips, he wrestles a scuffed lighter from his the pit of his pocket. The weight of the trinket is familiar, the yellowed label wrinkled and torn in all the right places. When he rubs the metal teeth of the lighter's mouth with a calloused thumb, it sputters up in a windswept spark before disappearing against the cerulean backdrop of the sky.

The bustling sounds of traffic and tourists slips underwater, muffled, indistinct, as if a door had suddenly closed to the world around him.

He almost sighs with relief, but he inspects the lighter resting in his bleached-out palm once more. Expressionless, he strokes its plastic body with two firm fingers, and dips the pads of his fingertips into the divot in his wrist, pressing firmly against the indigo strains of blood beneath his skin.

He chuckles.

With improved confidence, he flicks the lighter again, and finding that it _does_ indeed work, lights a cigarette. He bites down on the white filer clenched in his hand and inhales, still sniggering as the smoke blows out of his nostrils. He doesn't even flinch when a canvas bag is strewn over his head from behind and the drawstrings are pulled tight around his neck. When his arms are restrained by strong, gloved hands, and the long stem of a needle slides into his skin, he lets the cigarette slip from between his fingers. In his mind's eye, he can see it rolling, rolling, rolling….

_f u c k i t a l l h e k n o w s  
w e h a v e t o m o v e q u i c k l y_

…rolling, rolling, and rolling until it ignites a piece of paper trash on the sidewalk.

The saints are marching in.

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2

He doesn't need to check. He wouldn't be broke in his dreams. But in a memory…

Axel sits in the _bibliotheque publique_ day after day for a week after his scholarship to _Ecole_ loses its funding. He flips through his portfolio admiring his coursework, sky scrapers and concert halls, and wonders just where everything went wrong; how from one day he was using his pen to design the cities of the future, and the next he was writing out false checks with it and counting down the days for his student visa to expire. Was he a bad student? Not really. Was he just that unlucky? Of course. Was he-

The refraction of the streetlights through the stained glass windows makes him wince. He pulls off his reading glasses and rests his head on the polished wood, pillowed by the unfinished sketches of his latest project. His angled view of the clock is painfully clear; it's almost closing time. He's tired and he should leave soon, but he doesn't want to see his dormitory door, pasted with yellow-sheeted eviction notices. A group of students sits down at the end of his table and drop heavy canvas bags on top of it. The reverberations rattle his jaw, mash his teeth against his cheek, and make him feel heavy, imprisoned.

With lithe, numb fingers, he holds his glasses in front of him on the table and folds the steel frames into themselves. Between the lenses, in the distance by shelves of undusted books he sees a man in a suit. There's a hat that covers his eyes, but Axel can feel his gaze and he lifts his chin and-

He closes his eyes and sees for the first time.

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3

He'll never be one of the better students, the masters that they are. But he likes uncovering dirty laundry. He finds that he's not too bad at it either. Breaking and entering. Stealing secrets.

It's not the most unpopular past time anyway. And he relives his first heist with the intensity of a fresh cut soldier.

Noises echo from the bottom of the stairwell; the projections are quicker than they had estimated. The mark is close, nearby in the maze of his dream, unaware that they're so, so close to retrieving what they've been sent here for. They need to land their next blows carefully, but the resonance of heavy boots from the bottom of the dark stairwell haunts them as they crouch behind an emergency exit. Isa sits in his shadow, presses his hand in the small of his back and whispers into his ear, _Run!_

His heart is pounding in his chest. He never feels more alive than this moment.

_w h a t a r e y o u d o i n g y o u f o o l  
r e m i n d i n g h i m o f w h o h e w a s  
s t o p i t y o u r e w a k i n g h i m u p_

He never feels more alive because his heart is pounding in his chest.

He never feels more alive because his heart is pounding in his chest.

Suddenly, the world gets hot, stifling. He begins to turn around, but Isa's hand disappears from his back and returns around his throat. Axel finds it difficult to breathe.

.

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4

His body feels like it's stuck on an elevator, in a steady, calculated fall that he can't control. It makes him faint, unsure, but he presses his nails into the skin of his arm and rides out the nausea, the familiarity.

"So, you're a criminal."

Axel looks at the remnants of foam around the edge of his espresso cup and then takes in the young man sharing a table with him. His interviewer looks fresh out of the university and wears a red sweater vest over a wrinkled dress shirt, the neck secured with a tie featuring the face of a cartoon mouse. They're in the shadow of high-rises and stacked buisnesses, on the window corner of a café of sorts, its dining area fenced in by wrought-iron gate. This is nothing like when the Organization recruited him.

"Aren't you a little young to be taking interviews?"

The young man's smile is expressive and full of boastful swagger. "That's what they tell me. But as a recruiting agent I've ended up with an internationally-renown retrieval team. I work under someone very important, I meet lots of cute girls, _and_ I have a really nice car," he finishes, fingering the knot of his tie with false modesty.

"So, what are you, a mouseketeer?"

He smiles again and taps the tip of his pen against his lips, his blue eyes sparkling in the grayish afternoon light.

"Something like that. Tell me about where we are, _Mr. Rose._" he asks with a comically dramatic trill, tilting a clipboard of notes towards himself.

Axel realizes he's been slouching, so he pushes himself upright in the wire framed chair and inspects the drab city street block. "We were walking down this street, right? That means that the point of origin is…back there." He points to a green-framed stairwell a few blocks in the distance. "At the stairs to the subway."

"So, you are aware we've been dreaming." In a silent response, Axel pulls a lighter from his jacket pocket and holds it upright on the café table. The young man almost looks like he's going to ask to touch it, but the plastic totem disappears into the curl of Axel's fist. The boy closes his mouth, jots something down on his pad of paper, and gestures for him to continue.

"Your lines are nice and straight, but you don't have the architectural layout for more than a blocks worth of street right? In the north quadrants of the sky you can see where the digital illustrations in the clouds are repeated and overlapped. And in the windows?"

Axel points to the stark white apartment building across the street.

"Each corner window has the same image, a woman watering her plants. You can't see her face, but it's the same projection over and over again. Brown hair, orange shirt, ugly plants. It's an automatic tell that you haven't even plotted the maze that far."  
Axel turns slightly to his left to face the wall-sized pane of glass their table is nestled against.

"The glass in the window? All reflections. Can't see any movement inside."

He watches the glass, studies his own washed-out likeness blinking back at him. He looks new, shiny and not nearly as broken as his mirror-image should feel. It doesn't look at all like he's been running from his past criminal coworkers, trying to keep his balls intact and his ass out of a jail cell. Weary of the sight of himself, his eyes drop to the table's surface over to his interviewer's yellow notepad.

"Now, I know that this isn't my dream either, cause I've got lucid mines set up all through my headspace. Any of these flaws, and you would have been flambéed into consciousness before the sedative wore off. And these are just structural inconsistencies."

Axel pushes his thumb against a smudge in the café window.

"How did you know that I grew up in Chicago?"

He presses harder until the glass cracks into a web of fractures. There's a sharp hiss, and a stream of smoke pushes up from under the pad of his finger as he grinds harder.

"Is this your dream? No offense, but your subconscious is a little sloppy."

The glass splits and shatters, crashing to the ground of the café porch into a million, liquid hot shards. Axel doesn't blink. He stares deep into those calculating cobalt eyes; the young man looks impressed rubbing the tail of his tie in between his thumb and forefingers.

Satisfied, Axel turns towards the smoking remains of the window only to be seared with the same dark midnight-bright stare. He stands level to Axel's shoulders, sporting the same ruffled, brunette spikes, the same dorky Mickey Mouse tie, and his down-to-a-dime blue eyes staring directly into his own, inches from his face, in a glare frigid with rage.

"No, it's mine."

He only has time to look back at the first agent once before the doppelganger punches him clean in the face.

_. . . . _

"Holy shit! You're good- no- _great_! I haven't seen Roxas with his panties in a bunch like that before. Man, you must really rub him the wrong way."

"Bite me, Sora."

Someone rises from a chair and drags it noisily against the carpet, interrupting the breezy humming of the PASIV device as it shuts down. Axel rubs his eyes, runs his hands over his lips looking for a swell or cut, and finds nothing.

"Nice trick." He murmurs against his curled hand. "Is…one of you…How do you-"

A familiar, blue-eyed recruiting agent appears in front of him, disconnecting his PASIV cord and pulling him upright by his shoulders. He smiles wide and claps his hands against Axel's chest as the redhead tried to shake the blurriness from his eyes. Once the edges of his surroundings fall back into their proper place, and the brunette young man registers properly in his memory, he panics and spins out of his grasp and around to search for his twin.

What he finds instead is a blonde staring back at him with a bitter glare as he pries open a composition notebook. He is partially reclined on the leather desk chair, but has swung his legs to one side and leans awkwardly on the appliance cart in front of him. In essence, he looks the same as Axel's recruiter, but his hair is bleached blonde and stylishly cut, and his skin is pale and pristine. The cargo pants he wears are heavily weighed down with notepads and drawing tools, a tiny coal pencil tucked behind his ear. The silver ring that hangs from his bottom lip glimmers menacingly like a fang in the low light of the hotel room and his eyes shine with the same, frosty intensity that he had seen in the dream moments before.

The brunette speaks up again, pulling Axel off and around the hotel bed, pushing him towards a pitcher of water painted with condensation. "Let's not waste time. My brother and I are forgers, our team is looking for a new specialist, and you're getting the full employment spiel-"

"_This guy?_ Really, Sora?" the blonde spits out around a mouthful of his pen.

"Shut up Roxas." Sora rambles on, nonchalant, giving Axel an imposing, happy grin. "You've got quite the imagination."

"So I'm told." Axel responds, distracted by the pair of girls who are sitting on the other hotel bed, listening silently. They each hold a large white sketchpad, and have drawing tools strewn out beside them. Just behind them, a silver haired man in a yellow sweater is shoving some manila files into a duffle bag. Feeling a twinge of dizziness, he looks again towards the blonde and finds that he is pouting and looking determinedly away from Axel, totally engrossed in his writing.

"You have a refined gift finding loopholes. We're interested in marketing it."

Axel pushes his palm against his temple and bares his teeth at Sora in a cynical smile. "What are you selling?"

"Security." He's still wearing that cartoon tie, and he touches it lightly in the same proud way that intrigues Axel. "And the chance to work on calibrating a complete mental firewall for dreamspace. Real self-defense. Under government grant, with some additional, _private_ funding to motivate ourselves." Sora holds out a paper cup of water to him. "It's a clean slate Axel, I know you haven't seen one of those since you dropped out of _Ecole_."

Axel laughs out loud, bitterly and brashly, both for remembering France, _Ecole_, where his dreams went haywire, and then at the fact that this Sora person simply isn't as naïve as he looks. Axel's hands slide over his hips and slip into his jean pockets. In one, he pulls out his beaten, red lighter, the other stays fisted against his thigh.

"Back on the straight and narrow." His curls his tongue over his bottom lip, tasting the idea with the skin of his teeth. "Everything is exactly as it should be."

"Isn't that what you want?"

Roxas, the brother, stares at him from the rolling desk chair. His eyes are lighter, but cooler in the discolored afternoon light, his eyelashes long and dark in their natural color. His lips are pinker, more severe than his brother's, but parted in a beautiful expression of disinterest. Axel slips the lighter back into his pocket.

"Maybe."

_t h e s e a r e h i s . . . . m e m o r i e s . . . .  
w e h a v e t o k e e p f e e d i n g t h e m t o h i m  
h o w l o n g d o w e h a v e . . . . _

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5

Sora says that his official job title is an unlicensed security consultant. Riku and Kairi just call him Mickey's temporary employee, with heavy emphasis on the word 'temporary.' Namine calls him _La Rouge_ and _Cherie_ because he's the only one who can speak her native tongue. Donnie, their temperamental pharmacist, calls him _Eek-shul_ on account of his heavy Chinese accent. Geoff, one of their burly body guards that haunts their floor as they work their way across the Eastern coasts of Europe, hangs around him easily and drawls in his low-country accent that Axel is liability. Roxas calls him an Organization butt boy and always looks surprised when he shows up in his room each morning to work, even though he's been living in a room just down the hall.

What he ends up doing though, is watching over Kairi and Namine's shoulders as they work on mazes, lending his mathematical skills to Riku as he prepares his point measures, and goading Roxas as he and Sora plan retrieval procedures for their next heist. He learns how to make coffee from a hotel coffee pot and takes taxi cabs to the nearest convenience store for microwave dinners and dry erase markers. He gets familiar with the maids that work on their floor, getting their numbers and trading them for tranqs from Donnie, plays cards with the busboys downstairs and Geoff.

He supposes he's not surprised when Roxas, after spending an afternoon creating impossible maze dioramas with an exacto knife and masking tape, tracks him down in his hotel room. The blonde has taken to wearing the unpressed dress clothes of his older brother's around the hotel, with his ratty sneakers and gaudy studded belt. Axel's still not exactly surprised, because he feels like they've been waiting to have this conversation, in a battlefield of shredded construction paper and colored post-its.

"I want to talk to you."

Sora and Riku are meeting with a client. Kairi and Namine have escaped to shop the Florentine marketplace. It feels like the first time either of them has been alone together, but it's actually the fourth or fifth. Now, though, they've had plenty of time to prepare what they want to say to each other.

"Alright. Shoot."

Roxas glances out the window for a second with his cold, blue eyes, and meets Axel's gaze again.

"I like the idea of my head space of not being infiltrated."

Axel chuckles and stretches his limbs on the bed. "Isn't that how everyone gets into this business though?"

Roxas's derisive snort is enough of a response.

"Well you know all about lying to people. Use just use your body." His dirty smirk is not well received; Roxas shifts his foot as if he's about to swing it forward, so he eases the lewdness from his smile.

"What's makes a bad lie?" He asks suddenly, leaning back on the squashed white pillows of his bed.

Roxas's eyes flick to the windows again. "Unclear intent. Shoddy research. Bad nerves."

"Nope." Roxas looks bitterly at Axel's grin. "Try again."

Roxas doesn't answer, but pulls the desk chair out and sits down on it backward. He leans his elbows over the back and rests his chin on the wooden frame. He looks haughty, indifferent, but Axel knows that he's listening.

"A lie is bad when you don't believe in it. It's exactly how the dream world even holds its structure when there are architects trying to build in its construction area. If you don't believe that you can make a six hundred foot skyscraper in your dream, then you're not going to be able to. Mind over matter."

Axel reads the patterns in the stucco ceiling and tries to group them into clusters, into clouds.

"The same thing works with lies within yourself. The parts of a dream that you don't believe in are the ones that are going to be the weakest points, and once you are able to recognize those points you can teach your mind to have a trigger-reaction to them. They're like little promises that can't be broken, they can only be set into motion."

"But you've managed to turn people's subconscious into ticking time bombs." Roxas interrupts, tilting his head on the curve of the chair. "Do you know how we tracked you down?"

Axel perks his head up, catching the blonde's half-lidded glare. Roxas clears his throat, and continues, "Sora and Riku pulled a heist on a girl from the Organization long before we ran into you. We tried to press her memories for information, but the moment Sora stepped into her head, he was struck by a lightning bolt. That's one of your signature firewalls, isn't it?"

Axel laughs, and gets the distinct feeling that he's been smiling too much lately.

"I'd like to see you last in my head for five minutes before you get charbroiled by my subconscious."

"I _would_ like that, actually." Roxas avoids looking at him, but instead stares at the closed PASIV case that's resting on the bedside table. Axel blankets a rush of excitement in his gut, rolls over the lumpy red comforter landing on the edge of his bed, and places his thumbs and fingers on the gleaming, silver latches of the black box.

"Well, then I'll teach you. That's my job isn't it? To keep you safe."

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6

It's not until Kairi watches Roxas and Axel pour themselves coffee from the hotel bar in paper cups for third time that morning that she decides to say anything.

"Do you guys have a cold?"

Axel risks a quick glance to his left, and catches Roxas flitting his eyes towards Kairi.

"Nope," he shakes his head assuredly, though he feels on the cusp of intrigue, which is how he feels around Roxas all the time now. "Fit as a fiddle. Why?"

"Well, you guys both rubbed your noses at the same time. All morning, actually. And the coffee? I'm waiting for you guys to start fighting for the bathroom." Kairi tucks a napkin between her lips and struggles to carry her and Namine's eggs from the buffet bar to a flat surface. Axel swings his neck around again to Roxas, and watches the blonde tip the cup fully into his mouth, his cheeks blushing from the heat of the coffee and _nothing else_. Once divulged of her foodstuffs, Kairi looks back at the coffee pot, Roxas as he fills his lungs with java and Axel as he smiles at him like a jungle cat. She smothers her hand over her mouth, and tries to whisper past her lips, "Sorry, Roxas!"

Axel glows with elation. Namine bites into her toast politely.

"You're working on a forge of me."

"I have a forge of everyone that I work with." Roxas grinds out, yanking the coffee pot from its cradle and refilling his cup. "Today, I made the mistake of practicing yours."

"Let me see it." Axel whispers, his back turned away from the girls on the bed. He tries to nudge his elbow into Roxas's rib cage, but Roxas waves his very full cup of coffee at him in his defense.

"No!" Roxas tries to step around him and get to his seat by the window, but Axel moves to block his way.

"Come on, I wanna see if you're as good a forger as you make yourself out to be. Can you really act like _me_?" Axel turns with burlesque-ish flourish and sweeps his dreadlocks over his shoulders. When he comes to a stop, he leans against the wall, cornering Roxas against the mini-fridge.

"I'll even let you cheat," he whispers with a sultry smile and leans closer.

"You're repulsive." Roxas turns his nose up and breathes out hot, coffee-scented breath that makes Axel's cheeks tingle.

"Lemme see it!"

"No!"

Then Riku comes into the hotel room with an easel and a calendar the size of a car hood. Axel lets his arm slide away from the wall, and Roxas pushes past, stalking past Riku as he struggles in the doorway, still blushing and indignant, his paper cup of coffee left steaming on the counter.

_. . . ._

"Alright, show me the goods."

Roxas's architecture is adequate, at best. Axel had openly welcomed to act as the architect for this little experiment, but Roxas stiffly refused to let Axel host, and had stubbornly picked an empty department store layout that they had used for a previous heist. It was simple, empty, and set a stale, unsavory mood. A grocery store would have felt more sexy, Axel thinks to himself.

"When was the last time you went to the mall? The eighties?" Axel gripes, swatting through the racks of bright, garish clothing impatiently. Roxas looks on the verge of backing out of his offer, though, so he ignores the clothes and positions himself directly in front of the blonde.

"I can't believe I'm doing this."

"I'm checking for authenticity. This is what I'm schooling you on, isn't it _grass-hoppah_." He presses his hands together in mock meditation, and Roxas chucks an empty hanger at him.

"If you don't stop calling me that I will make you eat my gun." His hand goes to his belt, where Axel knows he keeps it, but Axel simply prickles at the idea of Roxas pulling his gun at him. He wonders when he had such blatant disregard for the safety of his orifices, and licks his lips greedily. He sashays around Roxas's body and slides a hand onto his shoulder from behind, whispering hotly into the shell of his ear.

"Well, come on Roxas. Don't keep teacher waiting. I might have to give you a big, hot D."

Roxas tenses under his touch, but doesn't move his hand away. "What happens if I get an A plus?" he asks, trying to hide a competitive leer. Axel steps away expectantly, opening his arms towards Roxas, deferring the wide, tiled floor to Roxas to act as his stage.

"Then show me."

Roxas takes a deep breath, and the dimension slips where he exists for a full second. The reality of the dream contracts around him, and Axel has to look away where Roxas doesn't exist and the copy-cat image of himself does. As Roxas exhales, he slips into Axel's body as one would step into a bath of hot water. Roxas wears _Axel_ like a new pair of gloves, with his imposing stature, his wild red dreadlocks, his noxious green eyes. Axel watches _himself_ flip up the leather collar of his coat, pop one hip out and lean against the mirrored wall with his arms crossed.

"Oh, come on, Roxas. I never look that surly." Axel says, chewing on his lower lip and trying to appear unimpressed, but the sight of himself makes his blood boil under his skin. He angles his head up in feigned lack of interest, and sees the ceiling fans spinning in the rafters above him, thrown by the weightless feeling in his chest.

"Sure you do. Whenever I work with Hayner's team, you look like you've swallowed hemlock," Roxas bites back, the pitch and timbre of his voice a perfect imitation of his own. Axel bristles and takes a few angry steps towards himself.

"Oh, you wanna play that game huh, how about-"

"I'm not playing any games, _Axel._" Roxas growls out his name darkly, almost seductively. It makes Axel freeze mid-step. He watches as Roxas looks down at his body, _his body_, and pushes off the mirror. He takes slow, calculated steps towards his double.

"It's not even feasibly similar." Axel mutters, his eyes glued to the image of his likeness.

"Those are big words, _teacher_. Are you sure?" Roxas stretches his new, long arms over his head, showing off _Axel's_ hipbones, _Axel's_ stomach, _Axel's_ roman numeral tattoo just below his belly button, _Axel's_ trail of dark red hair that disappears under _Axel's_ Star Wars belt buckle. His eyes, his own eyes, swim over the body in front of him in awe and embarrassment.

"What's wrong, Axel? Feeling a little too comfortable with yourself?" Roxas flicks his nose with his fingers, mimicking Axel as he raises his own fingers to his face.

Axel's face heats up and he blanches, "Well, you try watching someone who looks exactly like you!"

The Axel in front of him slouches and gives him a scathing glare. Then he pounces, slamming Axel into the nearest column, the racks of clothes rustling with the rapid movement.

"Oh, I guess you do that all the time," he amends with a wince and a smile, trying to keep his own hands from closing to tightly around his throat. Roxas aligns his face with his own, his perfectly-forged fingers pressing into Axel's skin. He jerks Axel into the cheap drywall, and makes sure that his imitated height and strength is levied painfully against Axel's.

"How does it feel to be in the other guy's shoes, Axel? How does it feel to be under your own microscope?" When he speaks, Axel realizes how close he is to himself, and how marvels how agonizingly accurate the proportions of his body are. Roxas was a _damn_ good forger. He didn't need any more convincing.

"A little stifling, a little hot," he mumbles into the pocket of space between their bodies.

"See, this is why my work is so much more intricate, delicate, _professional_. I understand the _minutiae_ of other human beings, Axel. Just by wearing your face, I know your greatness you're your demise, I know strengths..." Roxas tilts his chin down, and brushes his lips on the diamond tattoos under his eyes,"...your weaknesses..."

Roxas wedges his leg between his thighs. Axel swallows a telling whine.

"...because I've looked for them. "

Axel leans his head back against pillar, gasping noiselessly, but Roxas still has the upper hand. His hands bear down into the curves of Axel's exposed collar bone and the angles of his body achingly hard. He levers himself up against Axel's body as it crumbles doll-like against the columns, his mouth open and hovering above Axel's. _His_ lips. His _mouth_.

"Being another person, making their personalities malleable, looking into the way that they are perceived by other people, you learn power. You learn discipline." Roxas winds his hand around the base of Axel's neck and fists the back of his hair; he yanks _hard_, and Axel's lets his legs collapse beneath him, his crotch grinding into the Roxas's thigh. He hisses between clenched teeth, but hears his own deep throaty chuckle echoing in the empty store.

Axel remembers suddenly that he has working arms and winds them around his doppelganger's, Roxas's, waist. His hands dive underneath the torso of his leather jacket and clench into the small of the other's back. Roxas's lips still hover above his own, sharing his each and every, heavy, panting breath. He smiles like a snake.

"You are so self-involved. You would actually fuck yourself."

Axel groans in frustration, and bends towards Roxas's forceful touches against his neck. "I'm not trying to sleep with myself. I'm trying to sleep with you."

"Yeah, try telling that to my face." The heavy shine of the florescent lights make Roxas's eyes flash a washed-out blue, but then he inclines his head and the color of his irises darkens to a smoldering emerald.

"Alright. Well, change back."

"No." Roxas's impression of his evil smirk grows wider.

"I don't think I want you getting comfortable with my body. Change back."

"I don't want to."

"Why not?"

"Because you're right." Roxas slides his hand over the breast of Axel's jacket. His fingers trail over the metal teeth of the zipper as he pulls the latch the rest of the way down, dipping inside to brush the trembling skin of his stomach. "I'm getting comfortable."

.

.

7

_a r e y o u s u r e y o u c a n d o t h i s?  
n o b u t i h a v e t o t r y  
. . . . _

When Axel wakes up naked in a bed of wrinkled white sheets, the first thing he smells is smoke. He leans up on his elbows and catches sight of Roxas standing by the window staring out at the swindling city lights.

"Are you smoking?" Axel asks, raking his fingers through his hair and pushing it away from his face.

"No." Roxas replies lightly. "You know I don't smoke."

Axel inclines his head to the door and sniffs. "Something's burning."

Roxas answers him with a low chuckle; one Axel thinks that he picked up from him, because it's familiar, fond, and evocative. "I think you're imagining things."

Axel pats the mattress sleepily. "Come back to bed."

"Alright." Roxas grins and clambers over the strewn pillows and clothes, stretching himself alongside Axel and dropping a hand onto his hip.

"I like you," the blonde mumbles tenderly, leaning against the palm of his hand and staring at Axel's bruised collarbone.

"I like you too." Axel swipes his finger over the tiny puncture beneath Roxas's lip and takes pleasure in the sight of him without the silver ring bobbing from his mouth.

"When I first came to you, I wasn't sure what it was that I was learning to protect." Roxas keeps a steady stare on the light constellation of red bruises on his neck and rubs the curb of Axel's hipbone anxiously.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, I've figured it out." Roxas raises his radiant blues to meet his gaze. "What I'm trying to protect."

Axel's face warms, and he knows that he's probably glowing with obvious delight, so he scoots himself closer to Roxas, pressing his lips against warm curve of his jaw.

"I found something worth protecting too." He flattens his hand on the small of Roxas's back and strokes lightly, savoring the softness of his skin. _And he was getting paid for it,_ he thinks ironically.

"And you're getting paid for it," Roxas speaks softly, entangling his hand with Axel's and dragging it in between his legs. Axel laughs and feels light-headed, giddy, and _perfect_.

"I love you…I love you so much."

Roxas pauses, his body bathed blue in the moonlight streaming from the open curtains, and looks like an image sketched out on drafting paper, a luscious, breathtaking, faultless impression of of his soul canvassed on the winter-white sheets before him.

He would never fail Roxas. He lifts their entwined hands to the swell of his chest, the chamber of his heart, and silently relishes the light smell of smoke amongst the linens. He couldn't fail.

That's just the way things had to be.

.

.

8

_Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth._

_What truth?_

"There is no spoon!" he and Roxas say together with snappish, foreign inflection on their tongues, their eyes squinted shut, and their heads teetering from side to side in mock wiseness. They're squashed in a cocoon of fleece blankets on the mattress in the dark, the television the single source of illumination in the hotel room. Axel laughs hard, breathlessly, and winds his arms tighter around the body next to him. Roxas presses back against him, the shadows around his mouth bleeding into one another as he reiterates the next lines silently.

_"Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."_

It's warm and hot underneath the blankets. His thighs are moist with sweat, and his heart beats loud against his chest. _Hot, it's always hot._. He doesn't have all the time in the world, so he knocks the covers away from Roxas's body and hoists him into his lap. _May as well have a little fun_. Roxas blinks and twists away to look back at the screen, his mouth agape in confusion, but Axel has strong, quick hands, and forces his face away from the glow of the television and into the grayish shadow, covering those parted, inquisitive lips with his own.

_Hot, it's always hot_.

The door breaks down.

Roxas jerks out of his grasp and screams.

A man stands in the doorway pointing his gun, but he pulls Roxas back to him. Shields him with his body.

The bullets in his back are worth watching Roxas pick up his glock, aim for the middle of Isa's forehead, and unload. The scar makes it easy. Axel laughs and laughs and sees tiny, fairy lights dancing around his vision and he can't help but fumble for his lighter before he crumples to the ground and bleeds out on the carpet. There's scrambling, and noise, and the shreik of a maid, but Roxas hoists him into his lap first and whispers sad, furious curses at him.

His lips can barely move around the blood that bubbles up from his throat, but he manages to whisper.

"Rah-" _gasp_ "Roxas, you have to l-listen to me, you ha-have to stay _safe_..."

His hand goes to his pocket, but his vision just _goes_. The last thing he sees is a mouth, a pink mouth and lights that remind him of sapphires.

Dying is easy.

_w e m a y s t i l l h a v e a c h a n c e t o g e t t o h i m  
h i s d e f e n s e s a r e t i g h t  
w e c a n b r e a k t h e m_

.

.

9

Cold. _Jesus Christ_. It's cold.

Bars that levy parallel shadows on the stone floors. Damp moss crawling down the crumbling walls. The sound of a pipe leaking and echoing somewhere in a labyrinth of rock. And the smell of meat. Rotting meat.

This was a prison.

His cell is blanketed in a thick darkness that separates only where the iron bars cut out a stark pattern against the floor. Dirt and debris clings to his arms and legs; he wants to move but he fears what parts of the cell he cannot see. A voice raises from the shady depths that surround him.

"I've had to watch a lot of unpleasant things. It isn't easy for me to sit idly by and watch as you tear my friend apart."

A fist from the shadows smashes into his jaw, and the taste of blood fills his senses.

"Where is he?"

The shadow moves, and from it springs another fist that Axel manages to narrowly avoid, and then one more that knocks the breath from his lungs. He crumples into the wall against the molding mosses and slick stones, wiping shakily at the blood streaked across his face.

"He's safe." Axel groans. He almost slumps to the floor, but a boot catches him in the crest of his ribcage, and his body writhes upon impact. He doubles-over in brilliant pain, curling into himself like a broken insect on the damp, cobbled stones. The dark sillouette twists and bends in frustration and fury.

"We don't know that! What makes you think we're going to start believing you anyway!"

His chest heaves, and he coughs up spit and blood, the speckled mess a bright contrast to the dark, stone surroundings.

"You're making a huge mistake," he sputters, dribbling blood down his chin.

"You're the one who's trapped here. You're the one who let yourself get caught!"

The shadow jerks towards him threateningly, forcing him to flinch backward onto the damp wall. It holds the loose shape of a human, and he can see luminous, neon eyes staring at him through the darkness. A rivulet of black blood drips into his eye, and blinds him; he hears the quick stride of heavy footfalls in front of him and flattens himself to the floor to crawl away.

"Tell us where he is, Axel. You can't keep him from us." Another fist, another blow; Axel rolls with the abuse, sightless and struggling for his breath, breaking for the world to see.

"I made him a promise—that I'd keep him safe!" he yells into empty space, shielding his torso with his beaten arms.

"You can't keep him safe any longer!" roars his interrogator, the sinister voice echoing in the dark chambers of the cell. "Tell us where he is!"

"No!" he shouts again. A kick catches him in the face and sends him sprawling into a puddle of his blood. A heavy boot lands on one of his hands, splintering the fragile bones of his fingers and kicking away the red trinket that he hadn't realized he was clutching. It skitterss across the floor into the shadow of his jail bars, unharmed and mocking his as the boot falls again, and another wet scream is ripped from his vocal chords.

"You like to play with fire? Well, I've got a few talents of my own."

A rope of dark matter slithers over his legs and winds tight. He can feel the tendrils of negative space closing around his arms and curling around his neck. Air escapes him and the deadening cold seeps into his skin, paralyzing his body. Laying in a mess of his own fluids, as his broken bones are stretched apart by a grievous force of darkness, he remembers.

It was one thing to watch him go. Not chasing after him was an entirely different matter.

Losing him had hurt in all the wrong ways that it was right for someone- no, something- so utterly dejected as himself deserved. The phantom muscle in his chest now beat with a steady resonance against the darkness that surrounded him- rang true with the genuine ghost of emotions.

"I'm not going to let him fail, Riku."

He could not follow. But he can make his own light.

He's always been able to.

"…What? Axel-"

"He's not allowed to fail."

.

.

10

_Hot, it's always hot_.

The door breaks down.

_They're trying this again?_

Roxas jerks out of his grasp and screams anyway.

Men and smoke pour in through the doorway, but he pulls Roxas back to him. He reasons that if they're giving this a second go, then Axel can try to steal another kiss. But before he can curl his tongue into Roxas's mouth, the blonde pulls away violently, and stumbles towards the dark men and their poised, gleaming weapons.

"Axel you can't save me!" he rasps out, clutching his hands to his chest, pulling at a noose that isn't there.

"I'm not tryin-"

"You can't save me so stop trying!"

Tear drops roll down ashen cheeks. Blue eyes. Dark and insistent.

_s o r a s t o p_

"What are you talking about, Roxas."

The smoke billows around their feet, thick and menacing, the black-suited men shuffling hastily though it with their shining automatics pointed at him.

"You aren't real! Leave me alone!"

_s t o p s o r a s t o p_

Axel is a locked box of flames. His defenses are perfect.

Between his fingers, he holds his lighter out towards the shivering, half-clothed boy surrounded by a legion of armed hit men, and the thick, rolling clouds of smoke that swells into the room at their heels.

"Well, neither are you."

Too perfect.

"Watch this."

The room explodes into light and fire.

Self-destruction. Sacrifice. Going down in flames.

He's good at that.

_I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that this isn't a dream. That there's no waking up.  
No, Axel, you're fine. You'll wake up with me. You'll wake up!  
No, I won't. Roxas, you have to listen to me, you have to stay __**safe.**_

Yes. He's good at that.

.

.

10

When a plane of reality is broken, it makes the most terrible sound. The sky cracks, as if someone were pushing on a sheet of glass; a divot in the space of reality splits and bubbles outwards in lines as that mimic a spider's web. Then a roar, a deafening roar of wind and rubble flies past him. The logic, the rules, the structure crumbles around and within itself. His feet loose all their feeling, but only because they no longer touch the ground. His mind splits and separates from itself, like droplets in a pond after heavy rock hits its surface. Seconds become eternities.

He writhes and struggles to exist where he doesn't belong.

.

.

11

A red light carries him home.

Light that travels far, the farthest he's ever known.

.

.

12

"We lost him."

"Damn it!"

Sora overturns the nightstand. A pitcher of water and a vase of daisys crashes the floor, jolting everyone out of their uncomfortable plastic seats, the remnants of the dream falling out of their consciousness too suddenly, too abruptly. Kairi leans to her left and vomits on the floor, and Donnie quickly hands her a wet towel. He twists out of his seat and waves Geoff in from the hallway, turning and checking the vital signs of everyone in the room muttering foreign curses under his breath. Riku hastily leaps to his feet after Sora, who starts suddenly to the edge of the hospital bed. Namine retracts the PASIV's cords swiftly and silently before anyone can trip over them, and hides her tears with the back of her hand.

"It took us this long to track him down! To isolate him!" Sora rattles the metal guard violently in his clenched, white hands. Riku grasps at his wrists from behind and tries to pry his fingers away from the bars.

"You moved too quickly!" Riku attempts to stem the frustration from his voice as he struggles with Sora's limbs. "You shouldn't have-"

"Fuck you! Get your hands off of me, Riku!" Sora lets go of the bed, and Riku breaks away from him. Sora rushes to the middle of room, pressing his hands to his forehead.

Kairi speaks up from around her towel, steadily but softly. "His memories, Sora, they're a defense all on their own."

"Sora, we can try again. We just need to plan a little better. You know that he's-"

"Yes. I KNOW!"

Namine flinches and turns away from him at once, winding the intravenous cords back into the device's body. Her hands hover over the medical equipment positioned behind it, her wet eyes focused and unblinking on the last intravenous cord that stayed extracted, dripping from a pale, unmoving wrist like a plume from a bird.

Sora hears the silence in the hospital room all too loudly, and he feels a heavy weight settle against his chest, heaving it out in a deep, sorrowful sigh.

"I'm sorry, Namine. I know."

Sora looks past the crushed flowers and power cords that decorated the hospital floor to the foot of the bed's metal frame. over the yellow, woven blanket that lay strewn over the thin, pale body in the hospital bed.  
Sora pulls the silk tie away from his neck and throws it to the floor in weakened rage.

"Goddammit. GODDAMMIT. What's keeping him alive?"

Nobody answers him.

He watches, the creases of his eyes crinkling with disbelief and despair, at flaxen hair and a familiar nose and mouth. He grimaces as he sees the edges of _his_ mouth turned upwards in contentment.

_R o x a s_

.

.

13

He wakes up on a white floor. A color he knows. A cage he's familiar with. What looks like feathers drift through the hazy sky, but when they land on his chest, he finds that they are mild, flickering plumes of white fire.

When he stands, he slides his hand up and underneath the collar of his black jacket and he presses it underneath his jaw, relishing the touch as if it were a drink of cool water.

Everything is exactly as it should be.

"Everything is exactly as it should be," he tests the words with his tongue.

Roxas stands in white abyss, walking towards him with light, noiseless footfalls. Axel watches his pink mouth and the slats of grey shadows that dance over the lines of his lips move in tandem with his own. Roxas presses his head against the chest of his leather coat, as rubbery and uncomfortable as it is. He listens for nothing, because he would be listening for a lie, but he feels warmth, a fire that warms both of their bodies in the wake of black oblivion and white inferno.

"Everything is exactly as it should be."

There is no gray betwixt and between.

_No._

"Everything is exactly as it should be."

There's love.

_No. This isn't right, Roxas, you have to listen to me._

"Everything is exactly as it should be."

And there's fire.

_You have to stay s a f e. . ._

"Everything is exactly as it should be."

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_._

_"You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise."_

_Sleeping Lessons  
__The Shins_


End file.
